USA > Ohio > History of Ohio, covering the periods of Indian, French and British dominion, the territory Northwest, and the hundred years of statehood > Part 6
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The result of the hostility of the Ohio Indians was revealed in the boast of Dumas, commanding at Fort Duquesne: "I have snc- ceeded in ruining the three adjacent provinces, Pennsylvania, Mary-
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land and Virginia, driving off the inhabitants and totally destroying the settlements over a tract of country thirty leagues wide. I had six or seven war parties in the field at once, always accompanied by Frenchmen." The orders of the French officers to prevent the tortur- ing of captives were of little effect. "They kill all they meet," said a French priest, of the Indians, "and after having abused the women and maidens, they slaughter or burn them." Washington, by this time the foremost man on the border, and so strong with the people that Dinwiddie dared not displace him from command of the Virginia militia, wrote in April, 1756: "The supplicating tears of the women and moving petitions of the men melt me into such deadly sorrow that I solemnly declare, if I know my own mind, I could offer myself a willing sacrifice to the butchering enemy, provided that would contrib- ute to the people's ease." Again, "It is not possible to conceive the situation and danger of this miserable country. Such numbers of French and Indians are all around that no road is safe."
Even under such circumstances, it required the threat of mob vio- lence to induce the Pennsylvania assembly to vote a tax in support of war on the Indians. In every colony there was reluctance to levy taxes to strengthen the power of the provincial governments. "Our assemblies are diffident of their governors ;" said William Livingston, of New Jersey, "governors despise their assemblies, and both mutu- ally misrepresent each other to the court of Great Britain." About the time the colonies were forced to organize troops England declared war on France.
"It was the interest of France," says Parkman, "to turn her strength against her only dangerous rival, to continue as she had begun, in building up a naval power, that could face England on the seas, and sustain her own rising colonies in America, India and the West Indies, for she too might have multiplied herself, planted her language and her race over all the globe, and grown with the growth of her children, had she not been at the mercy of an effeminate profli- gate, a mistress turned procuress, and the favorites to whom they dele- gated power." Apparently, Louis XV had little fear of the English in America, for only two battalions were sent thither with the new general, Louis Joseph, marquis de Montealm-Gozan de Saint Véran. A hundred thousand were marshaled to aid Austria and Russia in wiping out the ambitious Frederick of Prussia.
But however troops were distributed, the conflict began to be world- wide in the summer of 1756. The rights of it did not appear on the surface. Frederick the Great took Silesia from Maria Theresa with very feeble justification. The British traders were trespassers in Ohio, a land discovered and duly elaimed by France. But these were not the real issues. The Seven Years' war was unavoidable. It was a part of the long and bloody struggle that began in the days of Philip II of Spain, for the enfranchisement of nations and individ-
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uals from various forms of tyranny, and the establishment of the pres- ent ideals of civil and religious liberty.
The French retained their advantage throughout 1756 in the war for Ohio. Sir William Johnson, clothed with extraordinary power as sole superintendent of the Six Nations and other northern tribes, independent of the governors and reporting to the crown alone, made George Croghan his deputy for the Indians of Ohio on the Pennsyl- vania frontier, and together these able men strengthened their cause by diplomacy. The Iroquois, in solemn council, were induced to formally "take the petticoats" off the Delawares, and call them men, which had a eoneiliatory effect. But the English had no success against the French outpost at Ticonderoga ; an expedition for the sup- port of Oswego was roughly handled by the Indians, and, later, Oswego was compelled to surrender to the French. Upon the ruins of this last stronghold of the English on the lakes, the priest Piquet planted a tall cross, bearing the inscription, "In hoe signo vineunt."
The main seat of war, except the ravages along the border, in which militia and Indians operated very much in the same fashion, incited by rewards for scalps, was on Lake George, where Indians from Ohio and more remote regions, even Iowas whose language no one could understand, were gathered under the command of Langlade, Saint Luc de la Corne, and other adventurers. The French strength, even with this savage reinforeement, was far inferior to that of the English, but a foolish diversion against Louisburg in 1737 per- mitted Montealm to besiege and capture Fort William Henry, on Lake George. While these reverses seemed to promise success for France in America, the great Frederick, rising from an equally gloomy situ- ation, routed an overwhelming French army at Rossbach, and Will- iam Pitt, the greatest Englishman since Cromwell. was called to the control of war and foreign affairs. "England has long been in labor." said Frederick, "and at last she has brought forth a man." Pitt took the reins of power with a mind settled to destroy the sea power of France and her colonial dominion in America, the islands of the sea, and Hindustan. His prompt selection of new generals, vigorous shaking up of the army, and bold reform of finances, saved the Eng- lish colonies from restriction to the Atlantic coast, and made possible not only the empire of India but the republic of the United States.
But in extolling Pitt, one should not forget the work of Sir William Johnson and George Croghan. Their quiet but indispensable in- trigues and negotiations bore such fruit that in 1758, when Amherst took Louisburg and Bradstreet Frontenac, and the Hurons, Ottawas, Maumees, Pottawatomies and other nations were ordered to the sup- port of Fort Duquesne -- menaced by the expedition of Forbes, Bou- quet and Washington-the Delawares and Shawanees, who held the key to the situation, were talking of peace with the "Yengees."
Christian Frederick Post, a missionary of the Moravian brother-
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hood or United Brethren, whose village on the Lehigh called Gnad- denhiitten (houses of grace), had been burned by the Indians after the defeat of Braddock, was sent by the government of Pennsylvania as an envoy to the wavering tribes. "He was a plain German, upheld by a sense of duty and a single-hearted trust in God." Doubtless, he was inelined to favor English supremacy, as preferable, from his relig- ious point of view, to the Jesnit : but the treatment his people had received in America could not have inspired him with a vivid sense of religious freedom. His controlling motive was to bring peace to the Indians. To their cause he had devoted his life, emphasizing the fact by taking in marriage a Delaware maiden. But, if one may view the situation without race prejudice, he persuaded the Delawares to a fatal error. If they, the wisest people of the great Lenape line, had gone on the warpath to assist the French at Duquesne against the army of Forbes, loitering on the way to know what the Delawares would do, it would have been many generations before their hunting grounds in the valley of the Ohio would have been disturbed. With the best of motives, but with that fatality that attended the association of the Moravians with the Indians, Post succeeded in persuading the Delawares to a step that hastened their rnin. But it was a ruin that, so far as man can see, was inevitable even if deferred, and necessary for a nobler and more profitable use of the land.
The Delawares were sensible of the tremendous responsibility that rested upon them. After Post had been told that they were willing to renew the old chain of friendship, provided the wampum belt was sent from all the provinces, they hesitated for a long time to let him depart, fearing the soundness of their judgment. When Post returned to Philadelphia, there was much rejoicing. Belts of wam- pum were sent to the nations for a great conneil at Easton, on the Delaware river, at which the governor of Pennsylvania, in behalf of all the provinces, promised to heal all wounds and renew all treaties on condition of peace. Post and a small party of whites and Indians were sent ont to carry the message of peace into the upper Ohio region, and received assurances of friendship from the Delawares, Shawa- nees and Mingos.
After this decision of the Delawares, necessarily followed by the other tribes who looked to them for counsel. there was an immediate change in the fortunes of war. Ligneris, at Fort Duquesne. was of . course endangered by the fall of Fort Frontenac, but the refusal of the Delawares and Shawanees to support him, followed by the with- drawal of the Ottawas, Wyandots and Maumees, indneed him to blow up his fortification and abandon the Ohio river, November 9, 1758. General Forbes, advancing, took possession of the place and built a stockade, and a village of cabins for his men, called Pittsburg. This bloodless victory, won by diplomacy, assured the possession of Ohio by men of British and German blood. William Pitt, fully
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appreciating the extent of the advantage gained, ordered that the fort should be at once rebuilt, with strength "adequate to the great impor- tance of maintaining his majesty's subjects in the undisputed possession of the Ohio; of effectually cutting off all trade and com- munication this way between Canada and the Western and South- western Indians; of protecting the British colonies from the incur- sions to which they have been exposed and of fixing again the several Indian nations in their alliance with and depend- ence on his majesty's government." His orders were promptly obeyed. Fort Pitt was constructed to hold the key to the Ohio river, and George Croghan continued his negotiations with the red men.
But there remained considerable fighting to do before the French would withdraw from the region south of the lakes, and they were yet aided by a large body of Indians from the western regions under their control. They made a gallant struggle in 1759 to hold Oswego and Niagara, but were defeated by the English and Iroquois, Sir William Johnson showing his ability as general as well as diplomat. The forts on the French creek route were abandoned, and the whole fortified line south of the lakes was lost to the French, exposing Detroit, Mackinac and Illinois to the enemy. On July 4th of the same year Croghan began a great conference with the Ohio Indians at Pittsburg, which was resumed in October with the Iroquois, Shawanees, Wyandots, Maumees and Delawares, Montour also light- ing the pipe of peace left by delegates of the Ottawas. All the nations of the Ohio region seemed to be convinced of British power, and were disposed to renew the recently broken friendship.
Meanwhile Wolfe invaded Canada, and was very nearly ruined by the shrewd poliey of Montealm, who retired with his army of inferior soldiery to the impregnable promontory of Quebec, and suffered the English to ravage the country. At last, in the extremity of his hopes, Wolfe scaled the Heights of Abraham and that most romantic of American battles occurred, September 13, 1759, which resulted in the death of both Wolfe and Montcalm, but need not have involved the fall of Quebec, had a man like Frontenac or Galissoniére been governor of Canada. After Old England was ablaze with bonfires and New England had gathered to hear thanksgiving sermons, the French rallied, defeated the British at Sainte Foy, and would have retaken Quebec but for the timely arrival of the invincible and ubiquitous English navy. On September 8, 1760, Governor Vau- dreuil surrendered Montreal, and the province of Canada and all its dependeneies, and the war was practically ended in America.
A few days after Vaudreuil's surrender an expedition was started from Montreal to take possession of the forts on the upper lakes, and, being reinforced by a party from Pittsburg, it left Presque Isle November 4, 1760. In this first military and naval force of the English speaking people in Ohio there were about two hundred bor-
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der rangers, mostly on board a flotilla of nineteen whale boats and batteaux (one commanded by George Croghan), while a land party of forty-two rangers, fifteen Royal Americans and twenty Indians, under Captain Brewer and Montour, marched along the coast. The officer in general command was Maj. Robert Rogers, a colonial ranger, who had made himself famous by daring exploits about Ticonderoga, and by a merciless onslaught upon the Abenakies of St. Francis, in revenge for the massacre at Fort William Henry .*
In his progress up the lake, Rogers followed the south shore, and after about two days' travel, reaching the "Chogage river," probably the Geauga, met an embassy of Ottawa Indians from Detroit, who informed him that "Ponteack, the king and lord of the country,"i was at a small distance, approaching peaceably, and desired Rogers to halt and await him. "At first salutation, when we met," says Rogers in his account, "he demanded my business into his country, and how it happened that I dared to enter it without his leave." Rogers disclaimed any hostility to the red men, announced his inten- tion to remove the French who had been an obstacle to peace and commerce, and handed over the inevitable wampum, but Pontiac gave no further answer, says Rogers, "than that he stood in the path I traveled till next morning, giving me a small string of wampum, as much as to say, I must not march further without his leave." Next day this hitherto unrenowned chief, who claimed a great dominion, to the extinction of the ancient Iroquois pretensions, even within the home country of the Six Nations, and sustained his pretensions per- sonally by "an air of majesty and princely grandeur," had a second conference with Rogers and graciously assented to his progress, giv- ing him a hundred warriors to protect and assist in driving the fat cattle that the expedition took with it. Even more than this Pontiac did, attending Rogers personally all the way, and, when they arrived at Detroit, saving a party from the fury of the Indians who had assembled at the strait to cut them off. "I had several conferences with him," Rogers continues in his narrative, "in which he diseov- ered great strength of judgment and a thirst after knowledge." Pon- tiae inquired closely into the military affairs of the English, expressed a great desire to visit England, and repeatedly declared his willing- ness to call the king uncle and pay annual tribute of furs; but "his whole conversation sufficiently indicated that he was far from con-
* In fater years Rogers went to the bad. When in command of the garri- son at Mackinac, he was brought before a court martial charged with plot- ting to surrender that post to the Spanish. Subsequently he served in the army of the dey of Algiers. Returning to America at the beginning of the Revolution he offered to accept a commission under Washington, but was suspected of being a spy. Afterward he was made colonel in the British service, and in 1778 he was proscribed and banished by the government of New Hampshire, his native land.
+ Rogers' "Account of North America," London, 1765.
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sidering himself as a conquered prince, and that he expected to be accorded the respect and honor due to a king and emperor by all who came into his country or treated with him."
Rogers received the surrender of Detroit November 29th, the Freneh commandant making no resistance. An attempt was made by Rogers and Montour to proceed to Mackinac, but the ice and deep snow prevented, and in the latter part of December the expedition started back overland for Fort Pitt, following, in the main, the great trail across Ohio, most important in the central west, which from the Wyandot town on Lake Sandusky proceeded through Mohegan town on the upper Walhonding to the town on the Tuscarawas, then called the Muskingum, opposite the month of Big Sandy, where there were at that time about three thousand acres of cleared ground. Thence the trail ran eastward to the Ohio river at the month of Beaver creek. Of the country Rogers said that "the land on the south side of Lake Erie puts on a very fine appearance; the country level, the timber tall and of the very best sort, sneh as oak, hiekerie and locust; and for game, both for plenty and variety, perhaps exceeded by no part of the world." On his return from Lake San- dusky he found good country all the way, the timber "white, black and yellow oak, black and white walnut, cyprus, chestnut and loenst."
Rogers' trip to Detroit was followed in July, 1761, by the visit of Sir William Johnson, who traveled in triumph along the lake shore that he had contributed so effectively to conquer. At that time there was no British post within the limits of Ohio, the nearest at the west being that at Fort Miami ( Fort Wayne) where thirty men were stationed, and at the east on French creek, where there was an equally imposing garrison. But soon after Sir William's departure (in 1761) a blockhouse was built on the south shore of Sandusky bay.
The same year is notable for the beginning of the Moravian influ- ence in western Ohio. This religions organization, known now as the United Brethren, from their old title, "Unitas Fratrum," has an ancient history, traced by some authorities back to the Greek church. Moravia and Bohemia were seats of the organization at the time of Luther's reformation, with which the seet felt sympathy and consequently suffered grievous persecution. Early in the eighteenth century a body of refugees from Moravia took refuge under the pro- tection of the Count of Zinzendorf, who afterward affiliated with them and was made bishop. The peculiarity of the church was devotion to the primitive ordinances of Christianity, and withdrawal from "the confusion and giddiness, pain and toil, deceit and false- hood, misery and anxiety,"# of the affairs of the world, opening
* The words of their great religious book. "The Labyrinth of the World, and the Paradise of the Heart," first published in 1631.
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their hearts to "Lord God alone." Mueh light is thrown upon their attitude by the fact that they gave Saturday to rest and meditation because they saw no scriptural warrant for negleeting the aneient Sabbath, and on Sunday joined the rest of Christendom in celebrat- ing the death and resurrection of Christ. In their communities there was a real community of goods, and industry was a religious duty. Their understanding of the scriptures would not permit them to go to war or return a blow. So fully did they depend upon religious guidance in the affairs of life that Madame de Staël called them "the monks of Protestantism." Through such a life they were happy and prosperous in times of war and violence, but this prosper- ity always brought upon them the hatred and persecution of their neighbors. In 1732 they began sending missionaries to America, actually to Greenland's iey mountains and West Indies' coral strands, and small colonies were planted in Georgia and Pennsylvania. Observing the necessity of missionary work among the Indians they labored among the Iroquois and Delawares, and soon aroused the disgust of the traders by opposition to the trade in liquor, and efforts to turn the red men from fur hunting to farming. Count Zinzen- dorf visited the missions in 1742 and encouraged the work, but it was much embarrassed not only by the enmity of the traders, but by the prejudice of good people who accused the United Brethren of sympathy with "Romanism" and France. This suspicion was strengthened by the tendeney of their Indian converts to refrain from war on the French, which warfare was the only use many of the colonists had for the red men aside from commercial gain. The Moravians were driven out of New York by act of the legislature, and they were imprisoned in Connecticut. Even in Pennsylvania they beeame the object of suspicion. In that province -there were many, also seeking confirmation in holy writ, who would extirpate the Indians as the Israelites did the Canaanites, that the people of the Lord might possess the land. To these the Moravians, sur- rounded by little towns of industrious Indians, were hateful. When hostilities were imminent with France, the rumor spread that the Moravians were "papist" spies. But in the moment of danger of destruction by the Pennsylvanians, the French Indians wiped out their village of Gnadenhütten, not far from Bethlehem. This mis- fortune relieved the United Brethren from suspicion," and as has been noted, one of them, Charles Frederick Post, was entrusted with important public service. His western excursions as an envoy to the Indians led him to visit the Muskingum valley in 1761. He avoided the Goshgoshung (Coshocton) town at the forks, where the
* A few years later, however, there were savage massacres of Moravian Indians by the whites, and the effort of the government to protect the sur- vivors brought the province near to civil war.
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traders, doubtless, had returned, but sought the recently established village of the Delawares on the Tusearawas, Newcomer's town, founded by the old chief, Netawatwes, who it is said was present at the first treaty with William Penn. Across the river, at the month of Sandy creek, he was given permission by the chief to make his home and start a school and mission. Returning in the following year, with young John Heckewelder as a teacher, he began the estab- lishment of a frontier home. But the Indians, fearful of aggression, restricted these missionaries to fifty paces square for farming, sug- gesting that the French were content with as much, and as they said God had sent them, doubtless God would provide them with food. They would have starved later, if Calhoon, a trader on the river below, had not assisted them. In the summer of 1762 Post was invited to attend a great conference with the Indians at Lancaster, and he performed this service for the Pennsylvania colony, taking with him chiefs of the western Delawares. In a little while Heeke- welder heard the rumors spread among the Indians that Post would not return, that his missionary effort was a blind for his real design to deliver the country to the English, and that the time was ripe for a great war of defense, in which the French, yet lingering in the west, would give assistance. Heckewelder soon escaped into Penn- sylvania ; the traders remaining until peremptorily ordered away, when, being attacked on the road, only two, Calhoon and James Smith, saved their lives. As many as thirty people of Heckewelder's acquaintance were killed in this outbreak, in the fall of 1762.
More direful events followed as a natural sequence of a war in which France and England had used the red men of the West as allies, with fair promises on each side, and then were about to con- elude a peace without any provision for them or recognition of their existence. The Delawares doubtless realized their mistake in desert- ing the French, and turning to the opposite extreme, talk was revived of that alliance with the Iroquois that had been proposed against both French and English. In the east, eneroachments of settlers were enraging the Delawares and Shawanees, while in the west the Otta- was, Maumees and Wyandots complained that the English had become parsimonious once they had gained the upper hand in trade, and that the garrisons of the forts were insolent and lawless. The old French inhabitants who remained did not refrain, we may imagine, from dwelling fondly upon the happier days of the past, and the Indians forgot that then they made the same complaints of the French. Under such circumstances the red men of Ohio and the Northwest went on the war path against the British empire, that had been triumphant round the world.
At the head of the movement was Pontiae, who, though it is said that he had been a leader for several years, is not conspicuous in con- temporary accounts previous to his meeting with Major Rogers on
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the shore of Lake Erie." There are various accounts of his origin, but he was reared among the Ottawas, a race always faithful to the French, and is supposed to have been the son of an Ottawa father and Ojibwa mother. Bancroft ealls him the "colossal chief," whose "name still hovers over the Northwest, as the hero who devised and conducted a great but unavailing struggle with destiny for the inde- pendence of his race." During the winter of 1762 he was busily engaged at his town near Detroit, organizing all the Indians of the Ohio valley and the lakes, sending to New Orleans for arms and ammunition, and employing two secretaries for his correspondence. Other famous chiefs, such as Guyasota, of the Senecas, were hardly less prominent in organizing war in the upper Ohio valley.
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